Our first BLR Book Club pick is FIRE EXIT, a novel by Morgan Talty. Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, The New Yorker, ELLE, NPR, and Harper’s Bazaar, Fire Exit is available on BLR’s Bookshop page, where a portion of every purchase goes to supporting our programming.
About Fire Exit
From the award-winning author Morgan Talty, comes a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another.
From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. He caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life―from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
Every week, we will be discussing a section of the book; follow along and learn more by visiting our BLR Book Club page, where weekly posts will live.
To be a part of the discussion, don’t forget to sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.
For weekly reminders, sign up for BLR’s newsletter.
Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.
Week 1: Chapters 1-3
These first chapters draw us into the story: the world of the Penobscot Nation and its environs, where protagonist Charles Lamosway watches his secret daughter across the river. He wants to tell her something.
1. Notice the imagery of blood and the body—the idea that our body knows things that we do not: “There was a history I was a part of, a history my body had experienced and moved through, but I never knew it. It made me wonder how much I didn’t know” (16). What other things do you notice?
2. Charles’ expulsion from the reservation at eighteen was an aftereffect of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980. You can read more about this law here and here.
3. Charles is a recovering alcoholic who attends AA meetings, where he befriends Bobby. He says, “We hear all the time that to quit something is to battle with the desire not to quit, but to be honest I don’t think that’s how it was with me. I wanted to drink once or twice, but that was it. Today, it would be just about impossible to convince me to drink” (29). How is Charles’ relationship with sobriety different than Bobby’s?
Join us on the BLR Book Club Facebook Group to discuss Fire Exit, and visit our BLR Book Club page to read all the commentary.